The present invention relates to crush towers for mounting bumper beams to vehicle frame rails, where the crush towers provide corner impact attributes.
Crush towers are often used to mount bumper beams to vehicle frame rails. The bumper beams are designed for high cross-car beam strength, such that they can withstand high impact loading on frontal impacts. The crush towers are provided to carry the bumper beams, but also to manage transmission of impact loads from the bumper beam into the vehicle frame. For example, the crush towers typically include crush initiators to reduce and/or control the transmission of spikes in impact energy being transmitted. It is desirable to provide a system that integrates crush towers and bumper beams, while decreasing the overall total number of components and while still maintaining design flexibility of the system.
Bumper beams are designed for corner impact as well as frontal impact. In fabricating a bumper beam for corner impact, the ends of the beam are often reformed/reshaped in secondary operations . . . or components are attached to the ends during secondary operations. However, secondary operations are expensive, time consuming, and require space and in-process inventory. Further, they tend to increase the overall total number of components and limit design flexibility of the system.